A street was blocked for road work in my San Francisco neighborhood this month, with a worker holding a large STOP sign to direct traffic.<\/p>\n
A white car did as instructed, stopping in the middle of the intersection and blocking traffic at the four way intersection. No one was in the driver\u2019s seat and there were no passengers, nor any training drivers \u2014 it was a Cruise driverless car, one of many that have flooded streets in the city in the last two years.<\/p>\n
The public works employee holding the sign was flummoxed as how to get the car to move away. After several minutes, the car slowly backed its way out and crossed the street, but ended up on the wrong side. After another 10 minutes, it managed to pull itself together, get in the right lane and drive down the hill. <\/p>\n
Most San Francisco residents can tell a similar story. The growing driverless car fleets in San Francisco are both a fascinating glimpse of science fiction come to life and a scary example of how Big Tech and auto companies have run roughshod over a congested city, with technology that really isn\u2019t ready yet and little regulation to keep it at bay. <\/p>\n
Now, the problem is coming to a head. San Francisco public officials have had enough, and are speaking out about safety threats ahead of a hearing next month that could let companies expand into larger fleets of fare-generating robotaxis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are not ready for prime time,\u201d San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson told MarketWatch in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have run over our hoses, they have blocked our fire engines from going on calls, they have just blocked our vehicles from getting down streets where there is a possible fire. They have just done a multitude of things. We had to break the window of one once because we could not get its attention,\u201d Nicholson said. <\/p>\n
While the average citizen can laugh at the stalled cars in city streets, the vehicles represent a major impediment for first responders. The San Francisco fire chief believes they put the city\u2019s firefighters and residents at risk. <\/p>\n
\u201cResponse time matters \u2014 a fire can double in size in a minute,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Aaron Peskin, president of the city\u2019s Board of Supervisors, said there have been 66 incidents in which driverless cars interfered with first responders this year. But the city has little control over the cars operated by Cruise, a unit of General Motors Co. \u201cYou have this thing where the DMV colluded with the industry to redact information that otherwise was public,\u201d he said, referring to the result of a lawsuit Waymo filed last year against the DMV to keep its crash data private, arguing that it held trade secrets. \u201cThe funny thing is it\u2019s not like San Francisco is trying to say \u2018let\u2019s put the genie back in the bottle.\u2019 We are trying to ensure that our streets are safe. They have become too congested.\u201d <\/p>\n Both companies are seeking to expand their operations into fare-generating robotaxis in San Francisco, leading to a crucial meeting of California\u2019s Public Utility Commission now slated for July. Waymo is seeking to begin passenger robo-taxi service in the city, while Cruise is seeking to expand its passenger robo-taxi service to the entire city, 24 hours a day, and remove exclusions of steep hills and roundabouts, deploying 100 vehicles. Helpfully for the companies, one PUC commissioner appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 is John Reynolds, who was managing counsel of Cruise until 2019.<\/p>\n Resistance is building locally and nationally. Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a nonprofit in Washington seeking more regulation and data transparency on autonomous vehicles as part of its mission for more highway and road safety, said it was \u201cillogical and irresponsible at best, and dangerous and deadly at worst, to go forward with any expansion until the significant problems have been resolved.\u201d<\/p>\n The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority (SFMTA) wrote letters of protest to both company\u2019s applications. In May, the SFMTA said that since it wrote its first letter in January, \u201cnew hazards from driverless AV operations in San Francisco have been reported, and general public complaints about driverless AV operations have increased significantly.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n GM,
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\n and Waymo LLC, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet Inc.
\n GOOG,
\n
\n GOOGL,
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\n Both companies already have Department of Motor Vehicle permits to deploy a driverless passenger taxi service, a process Peskin described as \u201cKafka-esque.\u201d<\/p>\n